**spoiler alert** Hm. Let's see. It's by the guy who wrote Remains of the Day, so it has a bit of a "modern literature, good-for-you, subtly subtle in**spoiler alert** Hm. Let's see. It's by the guy who wrote Remains of the Day, so it has a bit of a "modern literature, good-for-you, subtly subtle investigation of people and their motivations, with people going into rooms and going, 'Oh! I, oh, well, oh. I didn't know you were in here.' 'Yes, Sebastian, what is it? I am moving books slightly to the left.' 'Oh. Well. I guess I'd better leave.' 'Yes, I guess you'd better had.'" sort of thing going on, which I find interesting when well-done (which I find very rare). So much of it is just ordinary description of people going about their days, but the subtlesubtleness is nice, in that it really *does* convey more going on than merely moving books slightly to the left.

Plus, much of it revolves around a boarding school. What can I say - I have a weakness. There is absolutely no way boarding schools are half as interesting as I was convinced they were at age eight, but it's v. hard for me to let go of that inner eight-year-old fascination. In some ways, this book reminded me of so many of the British Boarding School Novels I read at age eight, except nobody turns into a cat or a long-lost wizard or a hidden princess or anything. It's just, you know. People. Kids. Being cruel and kind as kids can be.

The narrator falls victim to the same fault of so many of these sorts of books, in that she's far less noticeable than some of the other characters, but for once I really do believe that she is a decent person, more decent than some of the other characters. She does things and has little kindnesses that some of the other characters don't that make her a better person than some of them, not by default (hey, at least she's not as cruel as some of the other kids!), but because of some of her own actions. But again - subtle subtleness that is both subtle yet subtle. Or something.

More detailed plot and character spoilers follow.

Like, big spoilers. Seriously. If you want to preserve the conceit of this book, at least a little bit at first (I found it fairly easy to figure out what was going on but found the unfolding of The Secret to be interesting and well-handled), skip this.

So, yeah. The kids in the boarding school? The grown-up kids resolving all their weird relationship issues? Clones. Created for organ harvesting. And their entire lives are shaped around their future "donations," after which they "complete." It's like The Island, only with far fewer explosions, and ultimately nobody escapes.

Maybe that's depressing, but I kind of like the story where the Big Secret - which is never really a secret to the characters, just is referenced obliquely to the reader, because there's nothing Secret or Weird about it to the characters - is revealed and is pretty much horrible and nothing changes. The characters are interesting and valuable because of who they are, not because they are, like, the Liberators Of The Clones or because they beat the system.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's depressing, but I like it nonetheless.

I imagine reading this was like what reading 1984 or Brave New World is/was like when no one really knew what they were about. When their plots weren't already revealed before anyone had ever seen the inside cover of the book. The point is the people, not the science fiction plot idea behind them. (Okay, there is a talky section at the very end, where one of the characters dons Captain Expositionpants and gives backstory beyond what the narrator could know, but it was intriguing and I am willing to forgive its mild hokiness.)

I like that the teachers were revolted by the "students," theclones, because I can imagine that happening. I can imagine people working for the betterment of the students because of the ideal they represent, even as they are horrified by their actuality. I like the way the narrator and her fellow students are clearly established as human beings in the eyes of the readers before the notes of dissonance and oddness are fully established as being Other (and not just a really weird boarding school practice).

I like how art and creativity are deemed "necessary" to prove that the students have souls. I like how creepy that is. I like how creepy the doubt of humanity is, how the students are treated halfway like people, halfway like, well, I don't know what. Less than human. Locked into the endless cycle of caring and donation and completion. I like how depressing it is that the one school to actually educate the students is shut down for lack of support.(Although I would have loved to see that fleshed out more.) I like how even the people educating the students see it as educating them purely for the sake of education, not because they fully see them as human or to give them a chance at a better life (as which education is always trumped). I like how the Hailsham students are a product both of thinking that their education is for something more and good and of thinking about how their lives are already laid out and how questioning their ultimate donation and completion is not even in their frame of reference at this point, only requesting a "delay." I like how the word die is only used once, maybe twice, in the whole book.

Even as all that's going on, I was intrigued by how, hm, typical some of the characters and their interactions are. The best friend is charming yet cruel, and I for the life of me couldn't figure out why people were her friend. Yet isn't that the way it can be in school? The narrator was a little more introspective, a little more caring, a little more something than most of the people around her, but ultimately she wasn't particularly memorable. The boy is friends with the narrator but dates the cruel friend, even as he's in love with the narrator. And what makes it compelling in a way it wouldn't otherwise be is how it plays out over the backdrop of the fact that they're clones and being raised solely to donate their organs and ultimately their entire bodies. It just kicks everything into high relief and makes something that would be interesting but not particularly intriguing into complex and deeply intriguing. At leastto me....more

**spoiler alert** It's truly remarkable - Cassandra Clare has managed to create a slew of fantasy characters who are neither entirely one-dimensional**spoiler alert** It's truly remarkable - Cassandra Clare has managed to create a slew of fantasy characters who are neither entirely one-dimensional (just slightly) nor your standard caricatures, with interesting motivations, with an engaging plot with a few gentle twists, and a mythology that is intriguing in its set-up and makes me want to know more, and yet I cannot stand a single one of her characters. I have zero emotional attachment to any of them and actually find several of them pretty reprehensible, yet I am entertained while learning what happens to them next.

The Clary/Jace relationship is equal parts fascinating and baffling, as I can't decide if she's really going to keep them related to each other, and yet they are both so simultaneously flat and self-centered that the only thing interesting about them is their devotion to each other, even as that devotion seems entirely unwarranted. They're both pretty wretched to the other people who are in their lives, and I think she's shot too far with Jace in the "arrogant and infuriating yet still dastardly charming," as he's pretty much just irritating. For once it makes sense that these characters are fifteen or sixteen, even though they're doing all sorts of crazy stuff. They're just that emotionally dumb.

Simon is defined solely by his love for Clary, which seems equally inexplicable yet so very John Hughes movie-esque. At least he's slightly more fleshed out than Alec (who I hope realizes the folly of loving a tool like Jace and runs away to live a thoroughly debauched life with Magnus, who is the only one I don't want to punch in the face after this book). Isabelle is a nonentity.

I'm a little more intrigued by what happened with the prior generation, and I like that this book was much less coy about the past. I'm still not entirely sure I track where everyone's loyalties are/were, and the politics feel interestingly complex yet currently obscure (mostly due to my lack of emotional investment in any of the characters).

My favorite bit of the story in this book was Maryse Lightwood, Jace, and the Inquisitor, all wrapped around the issue of what it means to be a parent. That the Inquisitor's primary motivation for all her actions concerning Jace were in essence directed towards Valentine, and that her primary assumption was that Valentine valued his children enough to act in a rational-to-her manner. I'm still not sure which side of the line Valentine actually falls on (was he taunting the Inquisitor with his apparent lack of care for Jace just to torment her with her error, knowing that Jace was already escaped and safe...ish, or does he really not give a rat's ass? or is Jace even his son?), and I'm not sure if that's deliberate and skillful obfuscation or just I'm-smarter-than-you writing.

Also, I'm still a little fuzzy on the whole Jace swears loyalty to Valentine at one point but a) never gets caught and 2) never clearly reneges on that oath, even as he fights Valentine. Is he still bound to Valentine by that oath, or was that broken when he finally grew up a little? Maybe I shouldn't have torn through the book quite so fast.

All that, and I still gave it four stars, as it hung together much better than the first book, and I enjoyed being deeply irritated at all these characters....more

**spoiler alert** Dude. Best serial killer book I've read in a while. Funny, creepy, yet not horrifying in the way that American Psycho is. What can I**spoiler alert** Dude. Best serial killer book I've read in a while. Funny, creepy, yet not horrifying in the way that American Psycho is. What can I say - I'm much more engaged by a book that is a rollicking good mystery combined with a creepy-funny narrative voice versus a meditation on American society in the 80s combined with a creepy-funny-creepy narrative voice.

I'll admit I first picked up this book because I want to watch the Showtime series, and I'm a book-before-movie kinda gal. (Everyone at work is watching the show, and I want to be one of the Cool Kids.) Therefore, Michael C. Hall's face and voice were very much in my head the whole time.

Doesn't matter. Dexter is, well. Dexter. Deeply distinctive Dexter. Detached drama queen Dexter. Devilishly droll Dexter. One of the best first person narrations I've read in a long time, and I think the author does a v. good job of being internally consistent with Dexter.

In many ways, mysteries rely on deeply human motivations, passions, emotions, etc., which the author has deliberately removed from Dexter. What delights me about this book is how the author still manages to fit Dexter into that paradigm without giving Dexter a sudden fit of human compassion. The rules are the rules from the beginning to the end, and there's no wavering.

SPOILERS BELOW

Ultimately, you can't have Dexter kill Deborah and a) have most readers not throw the book across the room and 2) not kill all his funny with real, legitimate creepy. I quite like the perfect little deadly diorama (couldn't think of a third D word) at the end, with the dichotomy (ha!) between Dexter's siblings, between nature and nurture if you will, between Dexter's creepy and Dexter's funny. It's a very fine balance between the two, setting up Dexter's serial killeritude and keeping him relatable enough to a) be a sympathetic character and 2) fit within the shape of a mystery novel and not just have Dexter go, "Wheeee!" and kill everyone.

I do wish that there was a bit more plausibility to the idea that Dexter himself could be committing the murders, but I'm not sure how you do that and still tell the story. The whole following-the-van bit pretty much negated the possibility that Dexter was doing it for me, so that element of mystery felt a bit overplayed to me.

I like that Brian came out of nowhere, that it was not unsurprising that Dexter's Mysterious Past was involved in some way, but the way in which Dexter really was the focus of it all was unexpected. The gun was on the mantle, but it was only tangentially referenced, and you don't know it's a shotgun until you're staring down its barrels.

I'm not sure I buy the series' general premise, even fictionally - horrifying childhood trauma = soulsucking serial killeritude - but, again, I like that it's consistent. I like that the way Dexter expresses the closest thing he feels to affection is through rigid adherence to Harry's code, in its delicious logic to him.

Some of the narration is a little overblown - here, have another moon metaphor! and Dark Passenger - but it fits in a lot of ways. The root of pretentious is pretense, so it makes perfect sense that Dexter is a blooming little font of pretentiosity. His self-awareness of that is what takes him from irritating to backwardly charming.

Now I just need to fix my computer's sound card so I can watch season one on demand through netflix.......more

**spoiler alert** Okay, dude, this not-killer takes the cake. I think this may be the most gruesome, horrifying torture I can think of. It's the takin**spoiler alert** Okay, dude, this not-killer takes the cake. I think this may be the most gruesome, horrifying torture I can think of. It's the taking of the eyelids and propping them in front of a mirror, in addition to reducing a human being to a torso, that really cranks it to eleven. There's something viscerally terrifying about not being able to close your eyes. (Explains a bit about A Clockwork Orange, too, eh?)

I was somewhat more frustrated by the mystery surrounding this killer (or not) than with the one in the first book, but I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. The backstory felt, I don't know. Skimpy. Dodgy. Which it was supposed to, but it lacked a little je ne sais quoi. Maybe the first one did, too, but the personal ties and broader narrative structure tying those killings to Dexter made it much easier to overlook. The hazard, I suppose, of a second book following a similar format to the first, but you can't have every killer be related to Dexter. The author stuck the landing but maybe didn't nail all the technical elements along the way. (No sit spin?)

Two things stuck out for me in this book, and my enjoyment of both probably says nothing good about my mental state. :D One, I love that the author really went through with mutilating Doakes, getting him out of Dexter's way, and having Dexter show no remorse and even glee over Doakes' rather grisly demise. It's part of the cleverness of these novels that you (me?) genuinely want Dexter to be free to go torture the child molesters. What make the whole thing marvelously distressing is that in many ways, Doakes is the flip-coin of Dexter, and in many ways, you can't help but sympathize with his impulses, just as much as you sympathize with Dexter. But Dexter does not sympathize, even as he understands, and so he is gleeful at Doakes's fate.

The second is my somewhat bizarre happiness that Cody likes to kill things and Astor likes to watch, so Dexter has kids, in his own special way. I like that Dexter is going to have someone(s) who get him, in a way I don't think he's ever had. It's hard to get that upswell of not-aloneness with Brian for Dexter, because he came out of nowhere, and because in many ways he wants to take away Dexter's agency by trying to force him to kill Deborah when he doesn't really want to (which apparently I have an issue with, but not that of the ice rink murders? okay, maybe I am creepier than I thought!). Cody and Astor aren't demanding anything of Dexter, just understanding. And that makes me feel good for Dexter.

In short, I guess I like how the author can provoke a genuine positive emotional reaction (yay! Dexter has small children to mentor!) even as that positivity is conflicted (he's going to mentor them in the proper way to kill people!)

Oh, vigilante justice taken to its quasi-logical conclusion. I bet Batman confuses the hell out of Dexter. ...more

**spoiler alert** You know, I always think I should like Francesca Lia Block, that I do like her, and then I read her stuff and am reminded that, no,**spoiler alert** You know, I always think I should like Francesca Lia Block, that I do like her, and then I read her stuff and am reminded that, no, she's not particularly my cup of tea. She does a lot of interesting things with her narrative structure and the way she tells her story, but 1) I don't think her flights of structural fancy always help her tell her story better (which in my mind should be a requirement), 2) they often add an offputting distance between the reader and the characters, and 3) I don't think she always has as much control over them as she thinks she does (see also: #1 and #2). When your structure gets in the way of communication, it need tweaking.

Or maybe I'm just not 14 anymore. Maybe I've read too much, become too set in my ways, too judgmental to let her brilliance shine down on me. But if my struggle to figure out what's going on, who's who in her books, doesn't ultimately lead to some sort of revelation or insight into those characters (which, for me, that struggle is just a struggle and not an illumination), then it's kind of pointless. There are moments in this book when it does help, when it creates a mood or helps you understand how a character is dealing with/processing the events in his or her memory, which just makes those moments when it seems like artifice for artifice's sake seem even more pretentious.

Okay, I think I'm also kind of mad at this book because she punked out. She's got this Ooooh After School Special Incest OMG OMG OMG FORBIDDEN NO REALLY And Not In The Romeo And Juliet Sense LOVE thing going on, and then she freakin' punks out and has one of them be sekritly! adopted!

I'm sorry; that's a V.C. Andrews novel, and whatever my feelings about FLB are, I know that she's better than that. She didn't even have West(?) turn out to be Marina's long-lost real brother.

If it was an attempt to make Lex's death even more tragic, in my mind it failed. It's too soap opera-y (too, well, V.C. Andrews) in a book that takes a very soap opera idea and treats it very seriously. It makes what comes before rather hollow. It gives it a whole feel of, "oh, if only they had known!!", rather than looking at what happens when Marina loses the most important person in the world to her, for reasons, good or bad as you choose, that involve her.

Maybe it's an attempt at commentary on the fact that the relationship between them would be deemed wrong because of the way they grew up - i.e. as siblings - rather than their genes - i.e. completely different. That what makes incest incestual is the transgression of a relationship, not of bloodlines. Which is an interesting idea, but if that's what it was, I think the book fails. Instead it's a last-minute d'oh! to which there is no narrative resolution.

I will give the book credit for clearly expressing the idea that, however tragic you choose to see Lex and Marina's relationship in all its levels, a young man's suicide is even more tragic. ...more

This is one of those ratings that I fully admit may not be equally applicable to everyone picking up this book. Yes, it's very, very good, but what maThis is one of those ratings that I fully admit may not be equally applicable to everyone picking up this book. Yes, it's very, very good, but what makes it a five star for me may not hold true for everyone else. But oh. For me? For me, this is the book I never knew I wanted to read until I held it in my hands, and once I did, I couldn't imagine not having read it before, much less not known about it before.

It's a graphic novel (check) slash travel journal (check) that's as much about a mental journey as a physical one (check) through France (check), Morocco (check), and Spain (check) among others, with a particular emphasis on what it's like to travel alone (check), the glories and the mundanities of being an American in Europe and North Africa (check), the amazing food (check), and cats (check). Seriously. This feels like a story I could have written, if, you know, I were a dude with artistic talent and a heartrending love back home.

I love this book because it rings so very true for me from some of the very similar adventures I have had. I love this book because it is the graphic art equivalent of so much that I've tried to do with the written journals and photography I've done during my travel. I love this book because of how much better (and shorter) it says things I've tried to capture for myself. I love this book for the sense of "I've been there! I've done that! So true! Sotruesotruesotrue!" it gives me.

It's raw and it's personal and it's not perfect, and even though it was composed (drawn? written? both?) knowing that there would be an audience in mind, it still feels a bit like rereading my own journals from Brussels, from Marrakesh, from Granada, from Dijon all those years ago.

And did I mention the food? The lovingly detailed drawings and descriptions of the food? Because yes. ...more

Likely interesting ideas completely subsumed by self-aggrandizement and shitty writing. This book is structured pretty much like an episode of AmericaLikely interesting ideas completely subsumed by self-aggrandizement and shitty writing. This book is structured pretty much like an episode of America's Next Top Model: recap of previous episode! glamor shots of author! two minutes of "what you'll see next"! commercial break! recap of what we just told you you're about to see! sixty seconds of actual content! review of what you've just seen! more "coming up next"! wash! rinse! repeat! Tyra wears a jumpsuit, and Andre Leon Talley wears a muumuu with a face on it! Everyone's brains are ugly-pretty! Remember, you're there to sell clothes, not just look pretty!

This. This. This is what graphic novels are for. Augh. I want to read more stuff like this immediately.

A hashish dealer, a wannabe revolutionary jourThis. This. This is what graphic novels are for. Augh. I want to read more stuff like this immediately.

A hashish dealer, a wannabe revolutionary journalist, an Israeli soldier, a wannabe suicide bomber, and a wannabe something/anything from the O.C. get drawn into a conflict between a gangster and a djinn in, you guessed it, Cairo. There's interesting, nuanced things said about politics, about religion, about history, about class, about gender (sorta), about, well, everything you think should probably be talked about when you've got a dealer, a journalist, a soldier, an extremist, and a college girl running through the streets of Cairo and the Undernile. Oh, and then there are some gunfights and some mystical battles and evil and good and, really, the djinn is totally badass. The one problem is that this is not a very long book, so even though there's nuance, that nuance can only be briefly touched upon and still get everyone to the gunfight on time.

Recommended.

Also - there isn't a single. white. male. in a speaking role in the entire. thing. Dude. ...more

It's like the Lessa books from the Pern series, except with wolves instead of dragons, with all the creepy aspects of soul-bonded mating fully fleshedIt's like the Lessa books from the Pern series, except with wolves instead of dragons, with all the creepy aspects of soul-bonded mating fully fleshed out, and with all the women removed!

That sounds harsh, but honestly I enjoyed the read. Yes, I have a few quibbles - really dodgy gender politics that are brushed aside for most of the book, the tragically beautiful yet remote heroine, the feeling like the plot is merely a background to world description - but I had a thoroughly good time while reading the book, both in spite of and because of some of the weirdness. I can handle the weirdness when I'm pretty sure that it's done deliberately by the authors, even when the weird is not fully acknowledged by the characters in the book.

I don't know. I'm just a sucker for a good animal soul bond story, and this one's pretty good. ...more

Goddammit. If I end up reading this entire freaking series just because of the Wimsey homage character, I swear I will....not be surprised.

Okay, so,Goddammit. If I end up reading this entire freaking series just because of the Wimsey homage character, I swear I will....not be surprised.

Okay, so, there's an egregious amount of dialect, and the handling of Hinduism is maaaaaaaaybe a step and a half above Temple of Doom, and the author is clearly v. proud of how she's handling issues of race in Edwardian England with a heroine whose mother was Indian, and while you're totally aware she's tanking it most of the time, you don't realize how much she's tanking it until you read the passage about suffragettes, which is actually pretty decent, and oh my god, are we not even going to vaguely address the fact that the villain might, you know, have some legitimate grievances against the British in India, even if she is batshit crazy? No? Not really? Oh. Okay then.

The romance is a little half-hearted, and the fairy tale pastiche doesn't work nearly as well for me as The Fire Rose did (which is a guilty pleasure re-read of mine), and even the magic isn't all that magic-y for me, but DID YOU SEE THAT THERE'S A NOT-TERRIBLE WIMSEY HOMAGE? Because there is. And he's not terrible. And I'm going to end up reading the entire damn series just to watch him swan onstage every couple of chapters, say something pithy, solve someone's problems, then swan back off. Hey, I recognize my weaknesses. ...more

**spoiler alert** Alas. Alas and alack. The first half, three-quarters of this novel were awesome, a really lovely pastiche, maybe the best I've read**spoiler alert** Alas. Alas and alack. The first half, three-quarters of this novel were awesome, a really lovely pastiche, maybe the best I've read so far, and the last few chapters veered off into an entirely different story that I was far less inclined to enjoy.

Holmes in India, with an Indian scholar-spy filling the role of Watson yet not trying to be Watson oh frabjous day, a cracking good mystery, all sorts of atmospherics - A+A+A+. A real treat to read, especially hard on the heels of the Russellian The Game, with a similar heavy dollop of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, but for once with an Indian narrator - a slightly different, very welcome perspective. Lovely. The way the author plays with the narrative voice and dialogue is a delight.

And there were footnotes.

Then. Then. Um.

Spoilers for the end.

Then the author chose to make Holmes the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk, battling a not-quite-dead Moriarty, who was in fact an evil Tibetan monk before the monk-later-known-as-Holmes, um, brain-zapped him to stop his evil ways, leaving him drastically wounded psychically and convinced he was English. The final battle was all about Moriarty attacking Holmes (and the Dalai Lama) with a magic stone while Holmes fought him off with powerful mudras.

And, okay, I'm totally all about taking a classic story, a classic character and recasting that story/character in another culture, another history. It's a remix! I love remixes! Which is why I loved the first chunk of this book so much. New setting! Everything seen through a new prism! Lovely!

But in the context of all of the reincarnation and Buddhist warrior magic, Holmes at one point rushes to the rescue of the Dalai Lama because he "just knows" the lama is in danger.

Just. Knows.

Explicitly states he has no evidence but is going only on gut feeling and certainty.

Which is ultimately explained by his reincarnated/soul transferred/magic Buddhist warrior status, but that's the point at which it stopped being a Sherlock Holmes story for me. The whole point of Holmes is that he never "just knows." Reading a Holmes story should be a rollicking adventure, driven by a dash of crazy logic. Sure, there can be an epic showdown in a deserted temple beneath a glacier, and I'll even give you a supernatural battle for the climax and conclusion, but for me, at least some part of that battle should be a battle of wits. A battle of figuring things out. And as much as I loved Moriarty getting taken down by Huree's umbrella, Holmes's suddenly-revealed superpowers just threw me right out.

(Seriously. There is a point at which, during a moment of danger and crisis, one of the monks begs Holmes to "remember who you are!", at which point he does, and magical shenanigans ensue. It verged on Neo's "I know kung fu.")

I've got no problem with the political message or the spiritual content or weaving Holmes into the history of Tibet. I've got no beef with Sherlock Holmes suddenly plunged into a supernatural world, even with his own supernatural powers. But when those supernatural powers are suddenly more important than Sherlock Holmes being, y'know, Sherlock Holmes, then you lose my delight as a reader.

And, oh my god, how did I go from being an idly interested reader of Sherlock Holmes a year ago to someone who has intense. feelings. about the very essence of the character and what he means? I blame you, Laurie R. King. I blame you, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. And, yes, I must blame you, too, Arthur Conan Doyle. ::shakes fist::

ETA: I've figured it out. My problem is that this book fails to adhere to the oath of the Detection Club: "Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?" I assumed I was reading a novel that adhered to these standards, so the Divine Revelation took me by (unpleasant) surprise.

If I could, I would rate the descriptions of East Africa at least 3 stars, all the rest a grudging 2 stars. I wanted so much to like both this book anIf I could, I would rate the descriptions of East Africa at least 3 stars, all the rest a grudging 2 stars. I wanted so much to like both this book and this heroine, both of which should have been right up my alley, but they were steadfast in their refusal to give me the slightest hook of appreciation. The mystery was patently obvious and hamhandedly presented; the text tells us the heroine is smart and clever and then has her utterly oblivious to the easily-obtained answers to the mystery.

And, really, the heroine is at the root of most of the problems with this book. I can handle sketchy stock characters to flesh out a scene, but when your heroine seems to be mostly a compilation of Designated Personality Quirks (she hates tea and loves coffee, because it's less stuffy har har, we're going to tell you this at least twice in every scene where she might possibly consume a beverage!; she's anachronistically modern and egalitarian and independent, and god help us all, spunky) and a lot of telling entirely mismatched with the showing, it's hard to hang a novel on the strength ("strength") of that. This was also hurt by the imprecision of the POV, which was alternately deep in Jade's head then making descriptive, flattering commentary about her lithe figure, effortless style, and entrancing green eyes.

I just. I wanted to like her so much. Former ambulance driver in World War I! An adventuress striking off as a reporter on her own to fulfill a dying request! And instead she was this slapdash amalgamation of Cool Girl (she's too practical to be interested in all that lesser girly stuff; she has no truck with fashion and her own appearance but is effortlessly beautiful and attracts all the boys while being admired by all the other girls; did we mention she likes coffee and thinks tea is silly? also she's the best shot, the best mechanic, and the bravest hunter ever) with genuinely moving, well-written moments of PTSD flashback.

And let's not even get started with some of the race issues. Our independent (she's American, you see), anachronistic heroine thinks the way most of the Happy Valley set treat the local populace is kind of despicable (and she's right!), but the narrative hardly backs her up with her "and I will treat them better and no different from anyone else" prospect. The one character of color with any sort of significant onscreen presence and a personality beyond "mysterious, possibly wise, possibly crazy mystical person," is a little boy who just, like, stops showing up halfway through with scarcely a handwave, and the glaringly obvious MacGuffin has hardly any dialogue at all. (I can't really penalize them for being poorly sketched stock characters, because that's true across the board.) It's hard to believe in the heroine's protestations of equality when the author doesn't even come close.

All that, though, and I may still seek out the next book in hopes that the author gets better at writing people, because gosh her writing about landscape and animals was enjoyable. ...more

**spoiler alert** I. Hm. I don't know. This book is very much science fiction, very much not in the style of science fiction, and that's both its stre**spoiler alert** I. Hm. I don't know. This book is very much science fiction, very much not in the style of science fiction, and that's both its strength and weakness. The SF elements are used as constructs for the story, which is all about people. This is good, because I care more about people than I do about technology. This is bad, because I feel like some of those SF elements are not fully thought out (or at least not addressed in the text), because only the ones that have implications for the characters that the author wants to explore are given screen time. However, my delight at reading science fiction set in Morocco is enough to overcome a lot (even as that gives rise to its own host of problems).

So, okay. Near-future society, with two main SF...thingies: 1) the concept of "jessing," in which there's a mental implant to compel loyalty upon pain of sickness, madness, death, taxes, etc, leading to people selling themselves into indentured servitude and 2) the creation of another species(?), the harni, who are 98% genetically identical to human (but that 2% apparently really counts), are created in a lab, and are chattel, not people. Our Heroine has jessed herself, gone and fallen in love (sort of?) with a harni, and has run away, with attendant Bad Things.

I think the harni are handled really, really well in the book, as the author is clearly interested in exploring what this difference in species means and how it plays out, as well as in the status of harni in society (societies). But the jessing? Oooh. I. Hm. I feel like this was pretty much addressed only as much as was necessary to set up some of the familial/societal issues the author wanted to talk about, and a lot of the implications were brushed aside. The important bit was the illness/death that attempting to break the jessing would cause, not the implications of fucking around with your brain/emotions. I was surprised that the illness caused by defying the jess was entirely unrelated to the owner. There didn't seem to be that many emotional/brain repercussions, or at least not ones that were explored.

Additionally, I found the interpersonal/societal issues that this book explores post-jess-defying were, um, very lit-fic. It dealt with issues of honor and familial bonds and poverty and marital relationships in a Muslim, North African community, with the SF as framework around these very familiar issues. This should be awesome. I should be digging this so hard. ...I didn't really feel like the SF elements were being used to say anything new, except about the harni. Blah blah the son has brought shame on the family blah blah the daughter sells herself because she has no options blah blah the daughter seeks her own happiness at the expense of MOAR SHAME for the family blah blah escape to Europe blah blah diaspora drama blah blah did we mention this new species?

The structure of this novel helped get me over a lot of the blah blah. It's told in alternating first-person chunks, first Our Heroine, then her harni not-quite-lover, then her mother, then her best friend, and then finally one last chunk from her perspective. I very much enjoyed the immediacy of the first person narration from three very different women within the same society (the jessed, shamed young woman, the shamed widow, the 'successful' wife and mother), and I enjoyed seeing how their relationships played out, with all the resentments and pettiness and deep, unswerving loyalty, even over their anger and disgust. I enjoyed how the author gave a face and story to these women, even as I didn't feel like anything particularly new or exciting was being said. Look! It's shame and honor as integral parts of a society that strictly regulates the habits of women, and now we have new and exciting sources of shame! Sigh.

And, okay, here's the big thing - I'm a little uncomfortable with a novel that spends three-quarters of its time heaping horrible things on its heroine because of her position in a Muslim, North African society, only to have the last quarter take her to Europe, where she's immediately granted asylum and welfare and counseling and work, and everything's not perfect - she's still dealing with the aftereffects of the jessing and being not-quite-in-love with a being not really constructed to love her back in a human way and, you know, going from a very closed-in Muslim milieu to Secular And Open Europe - but Spain is pretty much presented as The Answer To Her Problems. I don't know. I was pleased with the complexity of the Morocco portrayed, but Europe As Bureaucratic Panacea rubbed me the wrong way.

A fluid, easy read, one that makes you uncomfortable in a lot of the right places but also a few of the wrong ones. ...more

The most delightful thing about this book is the sheer glee the author seems to be taking in rolling around in his Holmesy geekery. That enthusiasm isThe most delightful thing about this book is the sheer glee the author seems to be taking in rolling around in his Holmesy geekery. That enthusiasm is enough to pull me through the slightly dull bits when he's recapping history just because he can, only loosely tied to the story he's crafted for Holmes.

Definitely quasi-academic and not really curl-up-on-a-rainy-day sort of reading, but more than amusing enough to hold my attention in the fits and spurts I gave it. ...more

Oh, I have tried with this book. Tried twice now. There is so much here that I should like, so much that I generally enjoy while reading, but if givenOh, I have tried with this book. Tried twice now. There is so much here that I should like, so much that I generally enjoy while reading, but if given a choice, I never pick this book up off the stack. I never feel compelled to keep reading. I get about a hundred pages in by hook or by crook, and then I find something more interesting to do. Like scrub grout.

It will get one more try. Third time has been the charm with several books that have turned out to be treasured favorites. But something more is gonna have to congeal than just the dreamy, nonspecific setting, frank discussion of a whorehouse/theater, and a little manlove.

Kudos for making puppets exactly as creepy as they should be, though. ...more

Blar. I'm tired of protagonists being all rapey in the guise of being "edgy." If I'm going to read about an amoral, detached investigator of human natBlar. I'm tired of protagonists being all rapey in the guise of being "edgy." If I'm going to read about an amoral, detached investigator of human nature, I don't care to waste my time with this self-important, did he mention he's pretty? because he knows he's soooo pretty, insufferable blowhard. When your exploration of the dark sides of humanity are pretty much all about this dude sees women as chattel whose value is determinable by their level of fuckability, even if that level is unexpectedly higher than this paragon of human observation first thought, well. You're not particularly cutting-edge or interesting. ...more

Rarely have I been so enthused to read about wretched people being awful to each other. Shipstead does a remarkable job making me want to know more abRarely have I been so enthused to read about wretched people being awful to each other. Shipstead does a remarkable job making me want to know more about characters , to the point that I found myself thinking about them when not reading and was genuinely eager to pick up the book again whenever I put it down. She has a delightful turn of phrase, and while certain characters were awful enough that I never quite felt sympathy for them, Shipstead made me understand how they came to be who they were and why their awful decisions made complete sense for them. And I mean awful in the "you are a terrible parent who is emotionally stunting your children in the same way your parents did to you" way, not the mass murdering/wolf of wall street/physically abusive sort of way.

This book is like the drawing room comedy of manners upper class wedding shenanigans of a Regency romance, only modern and, for lack of a better word, "realer." The prejudices, crappy parenting, insecurities, and lack of neatly tied up spit polished happy ending is out in full force. Also there's a dead whale. Like you do. ...more

A vast, vast improvement on earlier books in the series, though that is faint praise, indeed. (And yet, and yet I still read them all.) The pacing isA vast, vast improvement on earlier books in the series, though that is faint praise, indeed. (And yet, and yet I still read them all.) The pacing is still weird, but Lackey went with the bold choice of actually having things happen at multiple points during the story. In fact, I somewhat wonder if this is the start of another sub-arc in the overall Elemental Masters series, as otherwise there are large swathes of the book that seem disconnected from each other. The training montage/lavish house party/wallowy descriptions of luxury and food at the heroine's new home base works much, much better if it's the origin story for this heroine. One of the other strengths of this book over previous - the jettisoning of the strict adherence to romance novel relationship pacing - also makes me suspect future books about Rosa, who is also one of the least irritating heroines in this series in quite some time. Rosa will get her tied-with-a-bow happy ending at some point, just not yet. Which is good. Lackey doesn't compromise Rosa's established character traits to force a romance happy ending, which makes for an overall better book.

So, hey. Hope for the future! Because of course I will still be reading. ...more

This series was recommended ever so thoroughly to me, as it seems to be absolutely my thing (England, lady mystery-solver, historical setting), and IThis series was recommended ever so thoroughly to me, as it seems to be absolutely my thing (England, lady mystery-solver, historical setting), and I think it simultaneously a) was oversold to me and 2) has elements I just don't like. It's terribly competent in doing its thing; I just don't like the thing.

I was expecting, I don't know, something more serious. I was not expecting to be introduced to a forcibly whimsical cast of characters. I was not expecting a romance-novel-style asshole hero. I was not expecting the heroine to make quite so many boneheaded moves.

I think it's that this is written like a certain kind of romance novel that does not work for me (some do, and I enjoy them thoroughly, but my tastes are very specific), except there's not a romantic resolution at the end of the first book, plus there's some dead people and some mystery solvin'. This again should be right up my alley, but the execution fell down for me.

Mostly I just cannot make myself be allured by a hero who says, "If you do X, I will not be responsible for my actions." No, jackass. You're always responsible. To place the blame for your actions - presumably harmful ones - on the heroine, in order to control her? Yeah. I'm checked out and could care less whether your emotionally stunted wooing over corpses is successful. This is a certain brand of romance hero who has little more personality than "hot" and "brooding" by which I remain utterly unentranced. Also, I will admit my bias for a clever heroine, and so far Lady Julia isn't cutting it.

All that, and I still give it three stars. It was competent, yes, and I will read at least a couple of sequels. It almost scratches the itch, and it remains to be seen if the other books magnify the problems or resolve them. ...more

Ugh. So tragic. A wonderful mystery author working with a wonderfully pasticheable story, and oh my god was this book boring. One part axe-grinding fiUgh. So tragic. A wonderful mystery author working with a wonderfully pasticheable story, and oh my god was this book boring. One part axe-grinding fix-it, one part tedious procedural, one part easily-predicted twist, and a whole lot of meh. The murder and court case were more about describing how things would've happened in 18whateverwhatever, more concerned with talking about social implications of scandal than anything else, and the upstairs-downstairs "twist" at the very end was broadly telegraphed and then rushedly unraveled.

Most distressingly, I found this book erased the women in weird ways. I mean, Pride and Prejudice - that's a lady book if there ever were one. It's about the ladies, the concerns of ladies, the machinations of ladies, their hopes, fears, etc. And Elizabeth is almost nonexistent here, popping up just long enough to pointedly think about how she'd never find her own romance plausible if she ever read it in a book, it just happened too fast. It's a book very much from a man's perspective, and while it's gently intriguing to see Darcy woven into a greater whole of a neighborhood and position in society than we're really shown in Austen's book, but much of it felt like showing off research rather than being narratively necessary.

It felt like a bunch of bits slapped together, not a solid whole like I'd expect from P.D. James, and it had the misfortune to do so in a Pride and Prejudice framework, where most readers are gonna show up with a bunch of preconceived notions and ideas about the characters. ...more

**spoiler alert** Well, hell. The cat just sat on the keyboard and erased a long, rambling review, so y'all should probably thank him.

In short - am t**spoiler alert** Well, hell. The cat just sat on the keyboard and erased a long, rambling review, so y'all should probably thank him.

In short - am torn. This book does really lovely things with women in an alternate history Cromwell-era London (featuring Olivia Cromwell and Queen Carola, like you do), with motherhood and career versus family and marriage and honor and all sorts of things. The heroine also rapes a woman who had already been raped by a mercenary while under the heroine's protection, then frees the mercenary right before his hanging after the raped woman's suicide. I think we're supposed to think that heroes are complicated, but the author went a little overboard on the "heroes do bad things" without ever showing us why our heroine was heroic in the first place.

Other disgruntlements: incredibly distant writing - very hard to get a hold of the characters. Rampant epithetism - the same character was referred to by four different monikers in half a page. (This probably didn't help at all with the distance in the writing.) And then the heroine's husband, who seemed a fairly decent fellow all around, was almost fetishistically described in his enormous, gross, greasy, snotty fatness. Did she mention he was fat? Because he was fat. When other characters would receive no physical description at all, every single one of his attributes would be modified by an adjectivial synonym for fat. And we'd hear about how he burst his seams or overflowed a chair or smeared a greasy pork chop over the rolls of fat in his face. Are you kidding me?

And yet I still give the book three stars, because the women. This passes the Bechdel test on steroids. ...more

Oh, man. How did I miss the poorly-disguised political ranting when I read this in seventh grade? Heinlein has, like, a fleet of axes to grind. And soOh, man. How did I miss the poorly-disguised political ranting when I read this in seventh grade? Heinlein has, like, a fleet of axes to grind. And some horses to beat. And some soapboxes to stack to the sky.

If you can navigate around the creepy paternalistic politics and dehumanization of women and the valorization of a particular brand of masculinity above all else (which you need, like, a supercomputer GPS to dodge), I grudgingly admit that this is a ripping good yarn. I can see why my dad loves this book (which, you know, says a lot about both my dad and the book). It's easy to get swept up in the momentum of the piece, and I always was a sucker for a good training story. Throw in a lot of stuff about teams and struggle and bonding and whatnot, and I kind of enjoy it, when I'm not rolling my eyes at the mockery of namby-pamby twentieth century society filled with people who weren't spanked enough as children. Or whipped as adults.

The most shocking thing of all is how rereading this book gave me a newfound appreciation for the movie. I, like most of the rest of humanity, found the movie nigh-on unwatchable (except for Doogie Howser as the quasi-Nazi psyops guy, which I recognized as hilarious even on first watching). However, in retrospect, I appreciate so many of the changes they made. The military! It's co-ed! And girls get to do things! Not just give men a reason to die! And the entire thing is essentially a piss-take of the hypermilitarized culture that the book venerates! I think it might actually be funny. ...more

I'm giving this four stars because of how much I like the idea of this book, how all the parts of it are things that I adore and have sought so much iI'm giving this four stars because of how much I like the idea of this book, how all the parts of it are things that I adore and have sought so much in other books like this. I just wish I'd, I don't know, enjoyed the book more? It was three stars' worth of enjoyment, not four. For as much as I really like the heroine, I wasn't particularly engaged by her.

I mean, so much is right. This is a slight AU of Regency England (the king goes mad a bit earlier, the queen is made regent, etc etc fallout etc etc), and it's about a woman of gentle birth who runs away with a swordmaster, lives In Sin with him for many years, and when he dies, she returns to live with her equally fallen aunt, who is a classy madame. Our Heroine, though, establishes herself instead as, well. A consulting detective. Private eye. What have you.

And, oh, there is detecting and politics and lots and lots of thoughts and feelings about women in this society (I don't think there's a single Respectable Woman onscreen for the entire book, a remarkable change), and nothing ever feels guaranteed, and so many of the practical little details that are often skimmed over in novels like this are taken care of, not necessarily made a big deal of, but there. And all the little things that will often make me pause or feel uncomfortable or have to be brushed aside to enjoy the fluffy mystery aren't here, and the mystery is pleasingly involved, and the heroine does not twist herself around and suddenly become someone else just for the sake of romance, and there are so many things I can point to and go, "yes! that thing! I love that thing!"

And it's just. I'm left cold, a little bit. There's very little levity here, and I'm beginning to realize how very much I value laughing, or at least snickering a little bit, or being amused at some point during the course of a story. There are a couple of lighter characters, but their lightness doesn't seem to touch the heart of the story, especially when one of them ends up dead. I just. For as much as this book gave me, I wanted more.

Still, I'm more than willing to pick up the next one. What it did give me was very, very good. Just a little dour. ...more

It's a brick of a graphic novel, but I read it in one sitting. Well, one sitting-on-the-stool-drifting-to-the-couch-back-to-the-stool-can't-put-it-dowIt's a brick of a graphic novel, but I read it in one sitting. Well, one sitting-on-the-stool-drifting-to-the-couch-back-to-the-stool-can't-put-it-down-while-I-get-a-drink-from-the-fridge-holy-crap-I-read-the-whole-thing. I'm not usually one to pick up a heartfelt coming-of-age first-love story, especially when set in the frame of a fundamentalist Christian environment, but I loved Thompson's Carnet de Voyage enough that I was willing to give this one a go. It is a miracle of the graphic novel that things I often find grating and uncomfortable in prose regained a bit of magic with the combination of pictures and words. The A-plot, the melody, the bit that probably drew most people in were what I sat through for the grace notes, the curlicues around the edges, the side-stories.

This book worked for me for two reasons: 1) Thompson's attention to the small mundanities, especially when they're a little bit dirty, that make me giggle even as they ring embarrasingly true (c.f. the bit with the bunny in Carnet de Voyage talking about the euphemistically kind 'traveler's stomach': 'it sounds like I'm peeing but it's coming from my butt!', or in this book, where the two brothers forced to share a bed as kids end up in a pee war - and when did this review become all about pee?) and 2) my unexpected identification with the protagonist's struggle to fit in/not fit in with his uber-religious surroundings. My family was not religious like the protagonist's, not at all, nor were they emotionally manipulative/abusive like in this book, but the neighborhood, the all-pervasiveness of a certain brand of Christianity rang discomfitingly true. It made me feel awkward and awful and outsidery all over again, if grateful that I didn't have to fight against myself like the protagonist did, too.

The whole magic-of-a-first-love bit probably plays a lot better to an audience who had that kind of teenage magic love. I found it as awkward and earnest and uncomfortable and wistful as it was watching people have those first loves in high school. So, you know, success, but it did kind of make me want to retreat back into the arms of science fiction and fantasy novels, just like high school.

But really - Thompson's attention to the little details, both in words and in drawings, is kind of magical. ...more

**spoiler alert** Hm. Hm. I just don't know. The whole thing just has a general air of eau de litfic writer dabbling in genre and being slightly smug**spoiler alert** Hm. Hm. I just don't know. The whole thing just has a general air of eau de litfic writer dabbling in genre and being slightly smug about it, which is an entirely unfair assessment. I think. Based on my multiple picking-up-reading-the-back-then-not-buying incidents with The Somnambulist, it looks like genre-pastichey-mystery-sci-fi-pulp-etc is Barnes's genre of choice. I'm just left with the feeling that the characters are uncompelling in a distinctly litfic way, and the genre bits are not unique or new or intriguing enough to compensate for the navelgazey whinging.*

Which is such a *shame.* There is so much here I want to like! The set-up: secret society battling the royals in order to prevent unspeakable horror! The juxtaposition of horror the absurd, with the secret society headquartered out of the Eye and pretty much all of the quasi-internal dialogue of Prince Charles, er, Arthur! The ultimate nature of Leviathan! The tv show catchphrase! Unfortunately, it all felt wildly hollow, and the city of London itself was a far more vibrant, compelling character than any of the (mostly) human beings on the page. It was filled with wonderful idea after wonderful idea, cleverly and deftly executed for the most part, but there was no heart beneath it all.

SPOILERS GO HERE.And, yes, to some extent this is quasi-explained away in the last few pages: Henry is such a dull, soulless twat because he actually has had his soul removed, but that revelation comes too late and too obliquely foreshadowed (if at all) to make up for slogging through hundreds of pages of first-person narration from a dull, soulless twat. The revelation of Leviathan as some sort of intergalactic filing company is brilliant and hilarious, a la Douglas Adams or Red Dwarf, but again, that revelation comes at the very end and just sort of sits there, being funny like a bump on a log and not touching the rest of the swamp.

However, the scene in which there's the big blowout and the leader of the secret society furiously orders everyone to their various jobs, no backtalk, go to it now!, followed by a note about how they had to stand around for ten minutes making small talk and general chitchat because they had to wait for the Eye to rotate back to the ground is genius and almost enough to raise my opinion of the novel as a whole. END OF MAJOR, END OF BOOK SPOILERS.

Basically, it kind of felt like a modern version of A Study In Emerald (dear BBC: plz consider doing an episode of the new Sherlock like this, plz plz?), without the actual, soul-crawling horror or lively characters.

Ah. I've pegged it now. Among the various genres it dabbles in (mystery, horror, science fiction, etc), it also does quite a bit of pastiche of the 70s-era spy novel, up to and including the wretched gender roles. And don't forget to throw in my now-quasi-standard bemoaning of how awful the women are in a horror novel. They're almost farcical enough to make me wonder if Barnes is doing it deliberately (the maiden who is kind of helpless and confusing and there mostly to be lusted after! the crone who is there to provide advice! the, uh, one in the middle who is transformed from dull and unfuckable to super-sexy operative who is powerful and therefore in order to make her less threatening is honest-to-god "smooth like a doll down there" (because of course one of the guys stuck his hand "down there" to check). Women are not people in this book, clearly and consistently, and I'm so very tired of that.

*Yes, yes. I disparage literary fiction in the exact same way that some literary fiction fans disparage genre fiction. But, ugh, life is too short to sit through that much internal drama without at least a few alien takeovers and/or secret societies and/or zombie invasions. C'mon, now....more

If you've been immersed in the feminist blogosphere for any length of time, nothing here is particularly revolutionary, and most of the first half felIf you've been immersed in the feminist blogosphere for any length of time, nothing here is particularly revolutionary, and most of the first half felt very 101, but I enjoy the simple fact that this book exists. I wanted it to go a bit further, and the "I'm going to tell you, I just told you, as you recall in chapter whatsit" was a little wearing, but, again, overall I liked the balance she struck of personal to larger trends.

One picky little point entirely unrelated to the quite nice content of the book: I hated the font. Like, I had no idea I could loathe the typesetting of a book so much. It was just close enough to italics that I kept thinking the primary text was some sort of quote and at some point they would have to go back to regular, easy on the eyes font, right? Right? Also, the moderately thick grey line across the bottom of the page was wildly distracting.

Ah, goodreads. How glad I am that you exist so that I have a place to record my positive, if mild, feelings about book content and my wild, vociferous negative feelings about book layout.

Lordy, I like the way this guy plays with ideas, the way he pokes at reality, the cleverness of their exploration. Lordy, I do not like the way he wriLordy, I like the way this guy plays with ideas, the way he pokes at reality, the cleverness of their exploration. Lordy, I do not like the way he writes about women, on the few occasions he does. It's v. old skool SF in how ladies are only important in how they affect and relate to men. Women are not granted an interior life; I mean, even in the story that explicitly grants the male protagonist access to the previously-impenetrable thoughts of the female love object, she is only thinking about him. The entire narrative of this woman, this story, is that the male POV character had no idea what was going on inside her, and when granted that access, turns out what's inside her is pretty much him. Which is way more innuendo-y than I intended, but still.

I'm torn as to whether to read his v. popular book, as I think his ideas would be fascinating and cleverly executed, but I'm not particularly keen to read yet another interesting book in which the only interesting people are dudes. ...more

**spoiler alert** I thoroughly enjoyed the heroine and at least thoroughly believed how much she loved the hero, even if I stayed upset longer at some**spoiler alert** I thoroughly enjoyed the heroine and at least thoroughly believed how much she loved the hero, even if I stayed upset longer at some of his shenanigans than she did. I just have no truck with the whole "I did/didn't do a thing for your own good, which I know better than you!" thing. I'm also not super-keen on the "she's so magnificent and above me, I'm not wooooorthy" moaning by heroes in general, but this guy was far better than usual. Also, total bonus points for an ending that didn't involve everything being fixed by a fabulous inheritance and gentrifying (er, literally). At least until the epilogue.

Mostly, though, I am deeply cranky at the "wacky" climax (not like that) of the plot where the hero and the sequel-bait second cousin swordfight and joust for the heroine's favor, even though she has explicitly asked them not to and attempted to intercede. It all smacked very much of "let the men sort things out between themselves, honey, and you'll take whatever the outcome is and like it," which seemed woefully out of tune with the rest of the novel. Sure, Dare saves it at the end with the heroine coming up with her own pair of scissors to cut through the tangle of inheritances and affections, but I had to skim the fighting scenes, I was so put off by it.

Also, if the sequel-bait second cousin does get his own novel, he's gonna have to deal with those possessive, anger management issues real quick, or I will have none of it. None. Eurgh. Seemed like a decent enough fellow on some occasions, but the "quirk" of his anger was deeply offputting.

However, I love love loved the female cousins who showed up, especially Harry the lesbian in a snit with her lover. I would read a book just about them and their tempestuous but eternal and sheetscorching love in a heartbeat. ...more

My interest was held much more unevenly than the four stars would otherwise indicate, but the good parts were just that good.

Mitford makes no attemptMy interest was held much more unevenly than the four stars would otherwise indicate, but the good parts were just that good.

Mitford makes no attempts to disguise her bias and interest, which makes for an eminently more readable biography than many. She's also far less meticulous with in-line sourcing than I've come to expect, which has the benefit of making things seem much more vivid and immediate while making it a bit harder to tease out where things came from and how much is Mitford's own opinion versus the recorded opinion of one of Madame's contemporaries.

Likewise, Mitford assumes a level of historical familiarity, both with the overall shape of events and specific movements/individuals, that could easily lose or alienate a reader. I consider myself at least decently read in French history, and I spent some quality wikipedia time with this book. A footnote or twelve would've been appreciated, though Mitford's fluency with her topic is also what makes it so eminently readable.

Can one describe a biography as a romp? Because I think this was, a bit.

Full disclosure: I read this in a mix of haze of thoroughly enjoying Mitford's novels and close on the heels of adoring the Doctor Who episode of the Girl in the Fireplace. I totally tried to pinpoint the spots in the narrative where the Doctor would've shown up. ...more

Wildly anachronistic social mores in Regency set dressing? Yes, please! Also a completely baby-free epilogue that provided a satisfying bonus resolutiWildly anachronistic social mores in Regency set dressing? Yes, please! Also a completely baby-free epilogue that provided a satisfying bonus resolution outside the framework of the main plot. Will wonders never cease?

I swear, romances like this read almost like fanfiction, in a way: the characters aren't shared, but the universe is, for all intents and purposes. It's so confined while still being interpreted so many different ways. I suppose that's why they're soothing. Ooooh. Now I want a Regency where the hero's been turned into a couch. Because, you know, it happens. Sometimes. I digress.

Don't read this looking for historical accuracy. Read it for a deftly handled inheritance plot in a semi-generic historic-y setting with the edges smoothed out by an author who favors putting her hero and heroine on an equal footing, where self-esteem and personal validation are concepts readily bandied about, where the hero explicitly (hur hur) makes enthusiastic consent the end-goal of his seduction. Sure, it's slightly ludicrous if you think about it too hard, but it sets up a more equal relationship between hero and heroine than most contemporaries manage.